This is totally what I’ve been doing all day. I call it “digital puttering”.
It’s where much of the beauty and craft of something is developed. It requires a craftsperson to not just “call it done and move on”, but instead to be intrinsically motivated to spend time with the creation intimately, rolling it around in your hands/brain. Guiding a vine here and there, plucking a leaf or two… until it ‘feels’ right.
Same here! I agree with your description, but my wife and I still absolutely love it. It’s brighter when your eyes have adjusted to the dark for a while too.
I'm pretty skeptical of what Sinofsky says. Back in the day, former Microsoft employees called out the differences between what he said and what he did, i.e. "Don't ship the org chart" -> his own org ships the org chart.
One of the hilarious exchanges (pun intended) that happened on Sinofsky's blog concerned MS Exchange. The executive-level view of events is vastly different from the actual events.
tl;dr:
Stevesi (Technical Assistant to BillG): Mgmt forced Exchange to use NT Directory (followed by glowing description of the NT directory)
DonH (Exchange Directory dev lead/ later Active Directory dev lead): No, NT was late, and eventually canceled NT Directory. Exchange wrote and shipped our own Directory and then moved the code to NT to use as the base for Active Directory.
Stevesi prevaricating about high-level executive view of the interaction of NT vs Exchange directory.
DonH: No, that's wrong. NT provided nothing. Exchange created an email-specific directory. I used that to make Active Directory. Water flowed uphill not downhill.
"That proved to be a defining moment because deploying a directory was hugely complex and there was no way EMS could do it twice. In one of the rare times an architectural choice was pushed to a team, using the directory from NT became a requirement for EMS. Many others supported this, including the Server leadership. It was to them as natural as pushing Excel to use Windows—the directory was that core to NT Server—while sharing files and printers was the baseline scenario, it was the directory that brought deep enterprise value to customers. For the better part of the following year or more, EMS would not speak well of using the NT Directory, and conversely the NT team felt that EMS was trying to use the Directory in ways it was not designed to be used. This sounded to me a lot like getting Excel to work on Windows, and it played out exactly that way. Had EMS not used NT Directory, it is likely Directory never would have achieved critical mass as the defining app for the client-server era (and remained the cloud anchor for today’s Office 365). And conversely, had the NT team not met the needs of EMS, then the NT Directory would have likely been sidelined by the rising importance of the email directory in EMS. Forcing this issue, while it might be an exception, only proved the strength of a strategic bet when it is made and executed. Still, it was painful."
Comment from DonH Apr 22, 2021, at end of blog entry:
"Speaking as the dev lead for the Exchange Directory (1991-1996) and later on Active Directory (1996-2005), there's a lot wrong with this chapter. NT's approach to functional directory services in the early 90's was "wait for Cairo. they're building one", which meant that we in Exchange had to build our own directory service. When Cairo collapsed (late 1995) Exchange and NT struck a deal so that once Exchange 4.0 shipped (April 1996) one of my developers and I brought a copy of the Exchange Directory source code over to Windows, and we built Active Directory out of that. Exchange in no way "bet on" the NT Directory; we essentially built the replacement for it in order to get the features we needed. Ask me if you need details.
However, the part about endless repeated pressure to build everything (specifically including the directory) on top of SQL is entirely accurate.
I'm only moderately annoyed that I had to pay ten bucks to post this correction."
Second comment from DonH:
"You're missing the point that there was no NT Directory. The strategy given to us was "use the NT directory, which is the Cairo directory. Sorry that doesn't exist yet, so Exchange might need to cobble something together for its first release." I built that something, and later went on to use it to fill the directory service shaped hole in Windows.
Presenting this as Exchange leveraging the NT Directory might be polite, but it is definitely not accurate.
And although I remain eternally grateful to LDAP for saving me from COM I completely agree about omitting it from the history."
My 2 yr old button-obsessed daughter loves this book so much. One of my all time favorite children books. It’s such a creative concept! I believe the guy that put it together is currently crowdfunding for an advanced engineering for babies edition.
There are many rare species which we do know exist that even trained wildlife biologists struggle to capture on camera. Not saying I think they are still around, but I wouldn’t take the lack of a photo in the smartphone era to be evidence of much (yet).
Agreed. Almost all of his actions can easily be explained by looking at how it is benefiting old money — coal, mining, oil, sugar, cars, cable, telecom etc. He is just helping last century’s industries hold onto their power.
That seems to be a reality of the “Swiss Army Knife for X” products. Tons of features are a blessing and a curse. You should listen to this Masters of Scale episode for an in-depth discussion of how to overcome the inherent marketing challenges:
https://mastersofscale.com/diane-greene-look-sideways/
For me it comes down to inertia. When I'm working on a project, I can barely get myself to stop, but when I do stop, it takes some time to get started again.
My trick is: as soon as I finish one project, I open up everything I need for the next project, then start my break. When I open up my computer next time, seeing everything there ready to go makes it much easier to jump right back in. This task switching problem was actually a big motivator behind why we built Workona.
Yes, but this ignores the fact that those patents are transferred to an acquirer upon the sale of your startup. Yes, the patent is largely useless to your startup. However, if you've proven the market, a patent could be an attractive perk to acquire your startup (rather than just copying and crushing it) since they can use that patent to keep other big players out.
Exactly. It's the same problem as communication of science to the general public: if you make it 100% accurate, most people either won't understand or won't care. After enough customer interviews you start to get a sense of what gets people nodding their heads, and that's what makes it into these articles. Assuming that statements like this reflect a company's complete understanding of the problem just isn't fair.
It’s where much of the beauty and craft of something is developed. It requires a craftsperson to not just “call it done and move on”, but instead to be intrinsically motivated to spend time with the creation intimately, rolling it around in your hands/brain. Guiding a vine here and there, plucking a leaf or two… until it ‘feels’ right.